The Confessions of Jacob Boehme

THE Simple says, God made all things out of nothing ; but he knows not God, neither does he know what he himself is. When he beholds the earth together with the deep above the earth, he thinks verily all this is not God ; or else he thinks God is not there. He always imagines with himself that God dwells only above the azure heaven of the stars, and rules, as it were, by means of some spirit which goes forth from him into this world ; and that his body is not present here upon the earth or in the earth.

Just such opinions and tenets I have
read also in the books and writings of
Doctors, and there are also very many

opinions, disputations and controversies

4op. 41 risen about this very thing among the Learned.

But seeing God opens to me the gate of his Being in his great love, and remembers the covenants which he has with man, therefore I will faithfully and earnestly, according to my gifts, set wide open all the gates of God, so far as he will give me leave.

It is not so to be understood, as that I am sufficient in these things, but only so far as I am able to comprehend.

For the Being of God is like a wheel, wherein many wheels are made one in another, upwards, downwards, crossways, and yet continually turn all of them together.

At which indeed, when a man beholds the wheel, he highly marvels, and cannot at once in its turning learn to conceive and apprehend it. But the more he beholds the wheel the more he learns its form ; and the more he learns the greaterp. 42 longing he has towards the wheel, for he continually sees something that is more and more wonderful, so that a man can neither behold nor learn it enough.

Thus I also. What I do not fully describe in one place concerning this great mystery, that you will find in another place ; and what I cannot describe here in regard of the greatness of this mystery and my incapacity, that you will find elsewhere.

For here is the first sprouting or vegetation of this twig, which springs in its mother, and is as a child which is learning to walk and is not able to run apace at the first.

Though the spirit sees the wheel and would fain comprehend its form in every place, yet it cannot do it exactly enough because of the turning of the wheel. But when it comes about that the spirit can see the first apprehended form again, then continually it learns more and more, andp. 43 always loves and delights in the wheel, and longs after it still more and more.

Now observe : The earth has just such qualities and quality-expressing or fountain spirits as the deep above the earth, or as heaven has, and all of them together belong to one only body. The universal God is that one only body. But sin is the cause that thou dost not wholly see and know him. With and by sin thou, within this great divine body, liest shut up in the mortal flesh ; and the power and virtue of God is hidden from thee, even as the marrow in the bones is hidden from the flesh.

But if thou in the spirit breakest through the death of the flesh, then thou seest the hidden God. For the mortal flesh belongs not to the moving of life, so it cannot receive or conceive the Life of the Light as proper to itself ; but the Life of the Light in God rises up in the flesh and generates to itself, from out of it, another,p. 44 a heavenly and living, body, which knows and understands the Light.

The mortal body is but a husk from which the new body grows, as it is with a grain of wheat in the earth. The husk shall not rise and be living again, no more with the body than with the grain, but will remain for ever in death.

Behold the mystery of the earth : as that brings forth so must thou bring forth. The earth is not that body which is brought forth, but is the mother of that body ; as also thy flesh is not the spirit but is the mother of the spirit.